And of course you can see my gift to Anslym (Bag Overflow) which was a pictorial 12 days of Winters Veil. I was very proud of it. Especially the Turtle gloves, and the 6 priests. Confused? Go check it out :)

What a year it's been. Can you remember what we did this year? No? Well let me remind you what we were up to as a guild this year...

January

We were doing our first raids in Cataclysm, Blackwing Descent. We were still doing 25mans then!

Queensland had those dreadful floods, lots of guildies were affected

February

We finally killed that blind dragon Atramedes - gee how long did it take people to figure that out!

Christchurch got hit by earthquakes again, this time with casualties

March

Thraso and Earthwisper came back from wherever they went to raid

We got our first Ulduar 25 man drakes as a guild

Fue hurt his hand and didn't raid for the longest time

We hit Nefarian for the first time

We got our Seafood Magnifique Feasts recipe from fishing

April

Patch 4.1 came out - attendance was still lousy

We hit guild level 25!

We killed Cho'gall

May

We killed Nefarian

We killed Al'Akir

We killed Cho'gall in 25 man

June

Patch 4.2 came out

First look at trash in Firelands

July

Everyone is busy doing their Fireland dailies

We're having trouble getting enough people to raid in Firelands

Got our first Fireland boss kills (Shannox and Beth'tilac)

August

We got everything up to Majordomo Staghelm down

I was trying to finish my Bloody Rare and Frostbitten achievements

Enna showed me The Whispering Forest

Voe joined the guild

September

We killed Ragnaros

The guild got Warglaives of Azzinoth achievement (and Roshii did too)

Xynzelle quit playing WoW :(

October

I got Val'anyr and the guild got the achievement too

We started doing Heroic modes in Firelands

Blizzcon 2011 with lots of talk about Mists of Pandaria

November

We got up to 6/7 Heroic Firelands

New recruits came from Zodiac Guard

Patch 4.3 came out

December

Got 8/8 in Dragon soul, 10 man

The guild got Thori'dal, the Stars Fury achievement (and Aza's hunter did too) AND got the Ultimate collection achievement for having all Legendaries

So that was what the guild was up to! In terms of what happened to me and my blog this year, I joined into the blog community through participating in Blog Azeroth events, and by also joining Twitter. I had a few particularly proud blog moments this year:

This last moment that I was really proud of, also happened during the Blog Azeroth Thanksgiving event. Tome of the Ancient mentioned me in her Thanksgiving post, and I didn't even know she read my blog, and what she wrote REALLY REALLY made my year. Because someone was reading my blog and actually enjoyed it (and I didn't even know she was reading until she wrote this).

I don’t raid, but I get my vicarious thrills reading about raids at The Daily Frostwolf. Until Fenris has a guild of retirees and night shift workers who raid between 10:30AM until 4:00PM weekdays I’ll cover it there. Most blogs that feature raiding usually post strategies, which mean nothing to me while Navimie’s posts on raiding frequently are more about the dynamics between personalities and the sometimes difficult job of fielding a raid.

So that's the year of 2011 in a wrap! I look forward to another year of keyboard bashing from raiding and from blogging. Thanks all for reading my blog this year! I hope next year will be as fruitful :)

I am sick of seeing everyone with their Sea Pony, and Darkmoon Faire will be up tomorrow so I will have more opportunity to waste my time fishing for the Sea Pony again. So Roshii mentioned he had seen people with a fish in a bubble so off I went to Ebay to get one for myself.

So here I am with my surrogate Sea Pony. I will be glad when I finally do get it!

Friday, December 30, 2011

It was my first night doing Deathwing on normal. I was new, Falln, Souglyy and Entranosh were new, I think everyone else had done it before. I hate not knowing something and everyone else knows how it goes.

Hwired as usual talks in his nice calm way and makes everyone think they know what's happening, because someone at least knows. I was more worried where I should be standing.

Healing is heavy to say the least! My mana was destroyed totally, was not healing for a portion because I just had no mana to heal.

It actually ran very smoothly, so smoothly that it was one shot. There was one hiccup with a slightly late bloodlust in the early part, because when they needed it for one of the platforms, it wasn't up yet, and it was pretty close trying to dps that ?tentacle - I have no idea what they were hitting at that stage, I was just healing.

Fortunately only one person died and that was Entranosh. I can't think of any amusing things that happened during raid, it all seemed to go smoothly. Lots of "stand here" and "move the the claw" so it was all pretty straightforward. I did feel a bit irritated at Entranosh who said that it was easy - of course it's easy when the group has already defined the strat and told you what to do! From a healing perspective it was challenging at least, but I do get the feeling he was right - Ragnaros was harder in terms of end boss stuff. And still is hard sometimes when people don't do it quite right.

Souglyy got a shiny new bow, and that was great for her. I can't remember what the other thing was but it wasn't something interesting from my point of view.

So... heroics next week? EEEK! I hope we're geared enough!

After Dragon soul we went to Firelands to help Az get his legendary. Damara joined us for a bit but Voe in his usual tactless way annoyed her and she left raid. So Ksret came instead - it was his first guild Firelands run. We tried to do some of Enna's quest things but some didn't go so well - think of it as practice for next time I guess! We wiped on Rhyolith (but we one shotted Deathwing... go figure). Heroic Majordomo was a pain, we got close so many times but wiped. And I was scolding Ksret for mucking up our achievement attempt again. It was getting late so we just switched to normal, and then killed it so easily and then off to Ragnaros. Poor Ksret hadn't done it before and it's tough to take in all at once, so he died... twice. But the fight other than that went rather smoothly. Nok came along as well to replace Voe when Voe d/c and didn't come back. Probably was bored of Firelands raid anyway.

This Lashtail Hatchling and I have been through a lot together. I did start the quest chain before Cataclysm but I didn't finish it, and when Cataclysm came out, I had to start all over again. I didn't realise that, I thought I could just pick up where I left off, but nooo... back to the beginning again.

When smashing those eggs, I got a Lashtail Raptor Egg Fragment, and this little raptor is looking up at me and I take him back to Grom'gol in A Lashtail Hatchling. But my Lashtail was hungry so while I was doing another quest killing Murlocs, she ate Murkgill meat in I Think She's Hungry.

While I was doing some other quests involving Trolls in Stranglethorn, she runs up and grabs a skull from one of those skull piles and is carrying it around. Which starts another quest, Favored Skull.

So I take the skull back to Grom'gol to Nimboya who is standing next to the cauldron, and once I hand that quest in, I got another quest A Nose For this Sort of Thing, from the skull!!

In the next quest, I wander around killing trolls in a parallel quest and my hatchling digs up Zuuldaian Fetishes. Once that is done, it's onto Who's a Big Troll, where I go and kill Gan'zulah, for his body.... creepy Then it's off to kill more Skullsplitter trolls for some Mojo and when we're done, who appears... Bloodlord Mandokir. I just helped him rebuild his body!!! And he makes me give him my little Lashtail... :(

So he runs off to ZG with my Lashtail hatchling. But, Nimboya sends me to Priestess Hu'rala who then makes me get Jungle Stalker Feathers for Mind Vision so I can see through they eyes of my hatchling. So then I See Raptor. She's being held prisoner! So now I have to go get some troll brains so I can do some Mind Control. Now I will Be Raptor!

This is a really fun quest. Here you take control of your raptor and you are running away from Mandokir and first you have to speak to one raptor so you can learn hot to chew through nets, then you get to the next raptor and steal some food from a sleeping troll, then he teaches you how to take burning torches from braziers and burn tikis to distract trolls so you can run past them. After you burn a few tikis the next raptor teaches you how to take skulls and put them in the path of trolls so they will trip and fall over. So two patrols fell off the bridges. Then one more tiki to burn.. and freedom!

But noooooo....

Mandokir catches you (the raptor hatchling) and takes you away, so you will never run away again... and you also witness something with Shade of Hexxer...

Fortunately when you're doing that controlling raptor quest, if you fail it just puts you back to the last raptor you spoke to. I think I had the worst time with burning Tikis.

So Hu'rala sends you to talk to Surkhan and he tells you that Jindo is trying to bring back Hakkar.

So then it's off to ZG! Like I wasn't sick of ZG already before 4.3... but here I am doing it again. I get to Mandokir and I can see my hatchling all tied up!

Once Mandokir is killed, the Hatchling has a quest An Old Friend, and I was reunited with my Lashtail hatchling. She's a bit bigger than the other raptor hatchlings I have. But she's mine at last :)

Thursday, December 29, 2011

I'm still doing my Winter Veil daily to get the Lump of Coal. Haven't got it yet.

Yesterday I suddenly remembered I had to do it and Roshii and Lushnek came along with me. I asked Roshii why he was still doing it since he already had the Lump of Coal, and he said he wanted the dagger. What dagger was he talking about... I had no idea. Didn't even know you could get anything except silly toys inside that bag.

Anyway, so I did my daily yesterday and when I opened up my bag there was a Miniature Winter Veil Tree inside. Huh. But no Lump of Coal.

It is pretty cool, the dagger really is a miniature Winter Veil tree...

I gave it to Roshii. I wouldn't be using it anyway, except as part of a Winter Veil costume. But can you believe the irony... and I'll just keep batting on, trying to get my Lump of Coal...

It's really hard at this time of year. There are few tanks and healers around. But multitudes of DPS. So last night I turned up and there were 4 healers, 4 tanks. And lots of dps. In fact, there were 6 mages.

I'm still at my parent's place and so I was playing on a wireless connection on my laptop. 2 bad things already when it comes to raiding. Oh and no vent, if the net wasn't slow enough already and my computer blasting away on it's little fan... yeah 3 bad things.

What we did manage to accomplish was 7 down in the first night. That was like.. wow to me.

The good thing I guess about running on bare minimum is that I don't have Skada running to see how absolutely craphouse my healing is. And I know it's crap because I still have lots of mana at the end of a fight meaning I'm not getting my heals off often enough.

Anyway that leaves all of Thursday night for Madness. It's another short raid week because it's New Year's Day on Sunday and Monday is a public holiday. Theoretically we could have raided fully. But no healers...

So I am kicking myself for totally idiotic raid behaviour. But there was some other memorable moments.

Zon'ozz

Moo pulled agro he thinks and the boss turned around and the ball went the total opposite direction to us and hit a wall

Melee weren't standing in front of the ball and it hit the tank

For some reason my dispels weren't showing and so I was squinting at my tiny computer screen at the party windows to see who had debuffs on them. That and my hotkey for removing corruption wasn't set on my mouse so it was doing jacks#$%

Hagara

Lushnek still having a love affair with those moving ice spike walls

Ultraxion

I forgot to click the button once, and the second time I clicked it a bit too late. Wiped us

Tank forgot to click. Died. Wipe.

Roshii was complaining because we weren't 2 healing it. As if I didn't feel bad enough already, my connection and framerate was so crappy I was being carried through the 10 man as it was, having the pressure to have to 2 heal it would just cause endless wipes.

Spine

I forgot to stand on the right side and fell off in the roll. Too busy freaking out about being stuck in a tentacle that I didn't run over in time when it let me go.

The last tendon had 40000 on it before time ran out. GAH! So had to do the last plate twice. Voe was the last healer standing.

However, I cleaned up big time in loot! I was very reluctant to pick up the Girdle of the Grotesque and the Tier legs because I had raid finder versions already and I was hoping to use my dkp on gloves or helm! However, helm dropped and everyone seemed to have it already so now I have Tier helm. Yay! So I switched my gloves to T12 resto gloves instead of the boomkin ones and still kept my 2 set T12 bonus. Woot! However, I don't like whinging about loot because Aza and Sev hardly get to pick up any gear because Conquerer Tier is hotly contested over. So I had one tiny whinge and then I had to bite my tongue because I don't want to upset them.

Tonight I will be at home, on my nice computer, with my big screen and proper mouse with full addons so I will be a happy tree. Can't wait.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Trying to update my blog look, coz I'm sick of it and The Daily Frostwolf is turning 2 soon, so I've decided to muck around with it a bit. There may be a few hiccups here and there as I'm trying to fix it, so please be patient! I want everything to be perfect by January 10 (That's TDF-DE's birthday!)

Anybody want to send me any pics for a new guild banner? Will be busy trying to make a new one in the next few days. And boy does the description of my blog need an update... Cataclysm killed our 25 mans!

Blog Azeroth organizes an annual blogger guest post Secret Santa and this year I am quite happy to have received Navi’s name in the virtual hat as the recipient for my guest post! (I do hope she’ll feel the same way ^^ )

As readers of Navi’s blog you know just how much she loves her guild and that she is a passionate healer. In fact, it appears at this point that she has but one spec - Restoration (a PVE and PVP variant of course). This will be what I will focus the first part of this post on.

Personality Types And How (Do?) They Merge With Role Choice In Gaming:

A brief history of my WoW “career” - I played a Holy Priest from Vanilla launch until midway through TBC when I rolled my Rogue. My Rogue was then my only character I played until the closing days of Wrath when I started playing with a Paladin that started his life as a tank, then moved squarely into a Healing role where he is today but has taken a backseat to my Rogue again which I am now playing as my main again.

I will not claim to be an expert in WoW, but I will say that I have played every aspect of WoW in some capacity. From raiding to PvP (arena and BG’s), from professions to achievements, from exploring to obsessive completion-ism. I’ve played all three roles, healing and DPS more prevalent but I have played the tank role a good deal.

Again, I’m no expert, but I’m observant, I watch people, I read people, and I think over what I see. There’s no denying that peoples personalities outside of game effect their choices in game. For instance, I am a very non-evil person. That sounds odd I know, but what I mean is I cannot come to grips with playing something that feels outright evil to me, ie. Forsaken, Warlocks, or Death Knights. (I’d throw Gnomes in that list as well, but they are kinda cute, and fun to punt, even as a die hard Alliance player [sorry Navi ^^]).

Tanks, generally, are people that in their “real lives” (I hate that term, gaming is just as much real as any other activity, I don’t ask people when I’m at a soccer match what they do in their “real life” why should I say that in an mmo?) are natural leaders, organizers, managers - folks that generally lead something in a professional capacity, or at the very least are the go-to person for their group of friends for weekend plans, making reservations, organizing events, etc. That’s a no-brainer. That’s not always the case certainly, there are no absolutes in life, but that’s a reasonable generalization.

DPS players tend to be all over the map, but a common theme is that they (we) are very competitive, thrive in competitive environments, and respond well to a prize based system (topping the meters!). DPS players are often proud of their characters, their gear, their accomplishments. Cocky is a word that can be used certainly, but not always. DPS’ers tend to be high energy, often high-strung folks that talk a lot (guilty).

Healers. Healers are a breed unto themselves for the most part. *Have you noticed I’m not speaking in absolutes, trying to avoid hate-mail ^^*

Generally speaking healers are the soft-spoken caretakers. The wisest members of the group. The ones that keep the bickering to a minimum during progression runs, or wipe-nights. Healers tend to be very compassionate and caring individuals that clearly bring that into the game from their personal lives. I consider myself to be very caring and compassionate. I am a husband and father and there is nothing in my life more important than my families happiness. I play a healer, and love healing. It’s an area of the game I keep coming back to, even though I at the same time love playing my Rogue. I think my caring side comes out more when I’m healing. I hate the thought of letting the flippant DPS’er die by not healing them in a random, even though they have insulted the entire group, intentionally pulled ahead of the tank, and blamed me for a wipe. Now, coincidentally, when I’m on my Rogue, I have no problems hitting that same flippant DPS’er with Tricks of the Trade, popping every cooldown imaginable while pulling an entire trash pack, then vanishing so that he/she gets instant aggro from 5 or more mobs. Call it dual personalities perhaps?

What I am getting at here is that healers tend to be a very caring group, not the leaders tanks can be (for good or bad) or the ego-maniacs DPS can be (CAN be, no hate-mail please). But is that always the case? I have run with healers that are more obsessed with the healing meters on every boss fight than the DPS seem to be (which is silly because having higher HPS can simply mean you spam heal too much for no reason, but that’s a topic for another time). Are these same healers caregivers in their lives, are they compassionate wisemen/wisewomen like the rest of the soft-spoken healers I have grown accustomed to? Or perhaps they are just meter-watching DPS’ers at heart that found they enjoy playing a healer because it gives them a different, though similar outlet for their competitive nature to shine through?

I’m a bit of both in all honesty. As I stated I am a very caring person and I am a big softy. I cry at movies. A LOT. Heck, I cry at some commercials. My 4yr. old daughter has me wrapped around her pinky and she knows it. But when I am healing a raid, I cannot help but get a tad angry when I am not topping the healing meters. Which, I will point out, has never once happened when grouped with a Resto Druid. *grumble grumble green-circle-of-meter-topping grumble grumble* ^_^

And a quick part 2:

Have Fun With Your Guild And/Or Raid Team!

I find that one of the worst things about raiding is the burnout you experience. The constant pressure to succeed, the constant wiping. It gets to you. And given that we are in the midst of Winterveil it is a great time to point out that WoW has an incredible amount of fun things to do, as a team/guild, that can cheer everyone up, get their minds off of raiding for a bit, and keep the morale high.

So get out there, throw on your ugly sweater, organize a snowball fight, take down the Grench, and most of all do the fun achievements together (IN VENT) and you will find your guild having a great time doing some very silly things, and that is the greatest way to keep everyone happy and ready to delve back into whatever raid content you are going after right now. Organizing a group of people do the achievements like BB King (see Navi’s recent post about that, great write-up!) can be so much fun, but you really do need to be in vent/mumble to truly enjoy it, that’s where all the fun chat takes place while invading your opponents cities.

Get out there and have fun, this and every holiday/event!

Thank you very much Navi for having me guest post on your blog, and I hope all of you fine readers of The Daily Frostwolf - Druid Edition didn’t mind my rambling too much ^^

Great Father Winter is an Orc for Horde side, and I believe he's a dwarf Alliance side.

Carts full of pressies!

This year we have the Greench and Metzen all in one spot - in Hillsbrad Foothills. I love the Winter's Veil feel the Greench has - "Winter Veil Elves" seated on the horns and presents dangling from them as well.

Silly old Metzen the Reindeer getting caught all the time.

The Greench's cave stash of presents - love the clockwork puppy!

On top of Ironforge there are some sledders! Not Winter Veil related but I've never noticed them before, Roshii showed them to me. In the cave there are kegs and people warming themselves by the fire, I think they fit in nicely with the Winter Veil theme though :)